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Catfish and Waffles
The Marstons: A California Family - Part 16
By Robin Lakin
November/December 2024
As we look back on the year-end holiday season, who can deny that food traditions are an important ingredient. I’m curious about the meals spread upon George and Anna Lee Marston’s dining table at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and, for that matter, all through the year. The Marston family cook had access to hand-written Marston and Gunn family receipts, now commonly known as recipes, that were handed down through the years, typically on the maternal side of the family.
Available family records and the trusty internet provides a glimpse into some of the dishes possibly served in the Marston home from Anna Lee Gunn’s childhood. Her mother, Elizabeth LeBreton Stickney, hailed from Newburyport, Massachusetts, where the traditional roast turkey and plum pudding made for tasty holiday fare. After marrying Lewis Carstairs Gunn in 1839 and moving to Philadelphia, local food traditions would have been folded into Elizabeth’s collection of family recipes.
Moving to the mining town of Sonora, California, during the Gold Rush, when the price of common groceries soared beyond affordability and many familiar items were unavailable, Elizabeth made do with a variety of culinary substitutions and inventions. We can surmise that some fabulous old family recipes actually stemmed from accidental fortune—the lack of a particular fruit, perhaps, or creative and unusual cobbling of ingredients to feed hungry Gunns.
The typical mining town diet included bear steak; oyster omelets, amusingly nicknamed “Hangtown Fry;” pine nut and huckleberry flapjacks; and the enigmatically named “English Monkey,” a concoction of breadcrumbs, milk, cheese, and eggs. Some of these dishes likely made it to the Gunn family table.
 In Philadelphia, the Upper Ferry Hotel advertised its “Catfish, Coffee, Waffles” and more in the Philadelphia Sunday Dispatch, May 1, 1853 |
 Advertisement for the Kaighn’s Point Hotel in nearby New Jersey promoting “Hot Coffee and Catfish” with muffins and waffles, along with turtle soup and oyster dishes. Philadelphia Public Ledger, July 4, 1840 |
Elizabeth described the feast she and her friend, Mrs. Myrick, prepared for the Gunn’s 1853 Thanksgiving, when Anna Lee was just four months old. Working through the night, the women baked squash pies and bread, boiled plum pudding, prepared a wild goose for roasting, and cleaned a fish before heading to bed at 4am. Waking an hour later, Elizabeth made a raised cake, cleaned the kitchen, and prepared breakfast for her family.
Imagine being a nursing mother, tending a cast-iron cook stove, satisfying five children’s needs, being up all night, and later serving Thanksgiving dinner on an hour’s sleep! No doubt their Christmas dinner and other holiday spreads required Elizabeth to summon the same effort until the children were old enough to assist their mother.
Elizabeth’s letters describe a variety of pies: apple, carrot, tomato, pumpkin, and rooster. The Gunns raised chickens, gathered eggs, and planted fruit trees. Their European, Mexican, and South American neighbors likely influenced dishes that became family staples.
With catfish, trout, and salmon available from Sonora’s Tuolumne River, the Gunns surely revived an entree they’d enjoyed in Philadelphia: catfish and waffles, the precursor to today’s chicken and waffle dish. Catfish and waffles served with coffee were fixtures in Philadelphia home kitchens and taverns throughout the 19th century. Local advertisements often referred to what to some seems a culinary curiosity as simply “catfish and coffee,” the waffle accompaniment presumed with no need of mention.
The next time you see chicken and waffles on a menu, consider the origin. Think of Elizabeth Gunn whipping up waffle batter and frying a batch of catfish. Imagine the smells and sounds of this dish emanating from the Marston House kitchen, and perhaps from your own ancestors’ homes. And the next time you’re eating some funky but delicious family concoction, know that it might stem from an accidental fortune, and wonder upon the how, the who, the when, and the why of it.
Read the rest of the ongoing The Marstons: A California Story History Series.
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